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Magnetic induction localization is an inverse problem that determines the relative position and orientation (pose) between transmitting and receiving coils by analyzing the received signals. Related work has established methods to resolve the localization into two candidate poses. However, these methods require having signed signals, or periodic signals whose starting point is unambiguously determined with respect to an absolute reference (the transmitted signal). For distributed systems, the signal signs are difficult to resolve. This paper presents a method to extract partial information about the signs from unsigned signals. The method is tested in a hardware experiment. 

Reconfigurable modular robots can dynamically assemble/disassemble to accomplish the desired task better. Magnetic modular cubes are scalable modular subunits with embedded permanent magnets in a 3D-printed cubic body and can be wirelessly controlled by an external, uniform, timevarying magnetic field. This paper considers the problem of self-assembling these modules into desired 2D polyomino shapes using such magnetic fields. Although the applied magnetic field is the same for each magnetic modular cube, we use collisions with workspace boundaries to rearrange the cubes. We present a closed-loop control method for self-assembling the magnetic modular cubes into polyomino shapes, using computer vision-based feedback with re-planning. Experimental results demonstrate that the proposed closed-loop control improves the success rate of forming 2D user-specified polyominoes compared to an open-loop baseline. We also demonstrate the validity of the approach over changes in length scales, testing with both 10mm edge length cubes and 2.8mm edge length cubes.